The U.S. Department of Education, which enforces Title IX through its Office of Civil Rights, says cutting teams to achieve Title IX compliance is a disfavored practice.

That doesn't stop schools from doing it. Some others that plan to cut teams at the end of the current school year:

Rutgers:

Will drop five men's teams and one women's. The board of governors reaffirmed its decision at a meeting last week at which protesters read a letter from a major donor who said he would no longer support the school unless men's rowing is reinstated.

Ohio University:

Will drop women's lacrosse, swimming and indoor and outdoor track.

Butler:

Will drop men's swimming and lacrosse.

Clarion:

Will drop men's cross country, indoor and outdoor track.

Slippery Rock, in the same Division II conference in Pennsylvania as Clarion, dropped five men's teams at the end of last school year. Three women's teams originally slated for cuts were kept under pressure from suits filed by female athletes. Last week, in settlement of the suits, the school agreed to set aside an additional $300,000 to upgrade facilities and coaches' pay for women's sports.

HARRISONBURG, Va.  For the James Madison University's women's track and field team, Saturday's meet is the final one of the season. For JMU's men's team, it is the final one, period.

JMU will shutter 10 teams — seven men's, three women's — July 1. The school says the move will bring it into compliance with Title IX, the federal law passed 35 years ago that bans sex discrimination at schools receiving federal funds.

JMU has angered both sides in a long-simmering national debate:

•Women's groups decry JMU for saying the cuts are motivated primarily by Title IX. They say that unfairly foments resentment toward, and resistance to, the law.

•Equity in Athletics (EIA), a new advocacy group based in Roanoke, Va., plans to ask for an injunction reinstating the men's and women's teams. EIA says it soon will add JMU to the suit it filed last month against the U.S. Department of Education. That suit seeks to invalidate the three-part test long at the heart of Title IX's underlying regulations.

As for the athletes, many have moved beyond anger to a deep and abiding sadness, according to freshman gymnast Travis Eiler.

"It feels like the school you love should fight for you," he says, "not against you."

JMU, a public school 100 miles southwest of Washington, D.C., has an undergraduate enrollment of 15,800 — 61% women, 39% men. After the cuts, 61% of its athletes will be women, 39% men. That's called proportionality, one of three ways schools can comply with Title IX's participation requirements.

When Title IX's three-part test was formulated in the 1970s, men accounted for more than half of college enrollment. These days, that's flipped: Women account for 58%.

"A program that sponsors football and has a high female population is going to have a difficult time," says Jeff Bourne, JMU's athletics director since 1999.

•Having a continuing history of expanding opportunities for the underrepresented gender, almost always women. JMU added softball in 2002. Adding a team protects a school for perhaps five years.

•Meeting the interests and abilities of the women on campus. Bourne says two thriving women's club teams at JMU want varsity status, demonstrating interest and ability; he declines to name them.

"We did not feel in a position to add" teams to satisfy the second or third tests, Bourne says, because JMU already had 28 teams — 13 men's and 15 women's. Few schools sponsor that many outside of Ohio State and Stanford (which have budgets that dwarf JMU's) and the Ivy League (which offers no athletic scholarships).

"We looked at the three prongs of Title IX, and we were not in compliance under any," Bourne says. "We had no defense and we felt the most prudent action was to devise a plan that would put us in compliance with the first prong."

Donna Lopiano, CEO of the Women's Sports Foundation, says schools that cut men's teams do so for budget and competitive reasons, not for Title IX.

"The primary motivation" in this case, she says, "had to be that they wanted to shift money into football and men's basketball."

JMU plays high-level Division I-AA football; the Dukes won the national title in 2004. Men's basketball plays in the tough Colonial Athletic Association; the CAA's George Mason made the NCAA tournament Final Four last year, and Virginia Commonwealth beat Duke in the first round this year.

"If this was solely for financial purposes, we would not have done it," Bourne says. "It saves $550,000 in a budget of $21 million."

That money, he says, will be reinvested into scholarships in the remaining women's sports. He says none will go toward football's $4.2 million budget.

"I'll believe it when I see it," Lopiano says. She concedes JMU's plan puts it in compliance with participation requirements, but she promises increased scrutiny to see if the school complies with other facets of Title IX, such as equitable facilities and scholarships.

"It is an interesting scenario," Bourne says, noting JMU will get more scrutiny for obeying the law than it got for not. "Doing the right thing isn't viewed that way."

Some staying, others leaving

James Madison will host the CAA meet for men's and women's track and field Saturday. Unless a court rules otherwise, it will be the last meet as a team for roughly 30 men, though individuals will move on to the Penn Relays and other meets.

The team has made no plans for its last hurrah other than to run well. "The way we're trying to look at it is it's like we're all seniors," distance runner James Snyder says.

Snyder is a freshman considering transfer. He has applied to North Carolina, George Mason and High Point. Fellow freshman Bill Hawthorn, who runs the 400 meters, will stay. He likes his courses and JMU's academic standards.

Five juniors plan to stay. Freshmen and sophomores are divided on going and staying. One is already gone: Freshman Scott Tekesky, the CAA's rookie of the year in cross country, transferred to Clemson.

None of the athletes in men's track has a full scholarship. That doesn't diminish their passion.

"Track is my life," sophomore sprinter Rainer Fiala says.

The team is pinning its hopes on the suit filed by Equity in Athletics, a coalition of athletes, parents and others that incorporated in February. JMU's cuts were "my personal last straw," says EIA attorney Doug Schneebeck, a JMU hurdler in the early 1980s who coaches hurdling at the University of New Mexico.

Other suits challenging the authority of the three-part test have lost in court over the years. Schneebeck says EIA is making a new argument — that the test is unlawful because it was adopted in the 1970s without following usual federal rulemaking procedures.

'Almost reverse discrimination'

Jennifer Chapman, a senior on JMU's track and cross country teams, is the kind of person the Women's Sports Foundation celebrates — accomplished athlete, campus leader and poised speaker.

Except that she believes Title IX's regulations need change.

"Nobody is saying Title IX isn't needed," she says. "I mean, it was so needed in the '70s. And it's definitely got girls to where they are now. But it's fighting the interpretation of it. Schools are abusing it.

"Times change, and you adapt to those changes. And if more women are going to college than men, and males want to participate in sports, why would we say no? That doesn't make sense."

She says her epiphany came Sept. 29 as the men's and women's cross country teams boarded a bus for the ride home from a race in Pennsylvania. An athletics administrator read a prepared statement: Ten teams — including men's cross country but not women's — would be gone by summer.

"The guys' team started crying," Chapman says. "Then the girls cried, too. Girls might cry after a race if they don't do well or they're in pain. But we had never seen a boy cry. It hit us really hard.

"And I thought: 'We have to do something. There's no reason guys should feel like this.' "

Chapman is the liaison between EIA lawyers and dropped athletes. She and about 75 members of dropped teams met with EIA attorney Larry Joseph on campus Tuesday evening as he gathered information for filing the injunction.

Men's interest groups have "shaped the thinking and perceptions of those kids at JMU," Lopiano says. "They've been brainwashed to believe if proportionality didn't exist, no teams would be cut. And it just isn't true."

Jim McCarthy, spokesman for the College Sports Council, a men's group, calls it "reprehensible" to suggest Chapman and others can't think for themselves.

"These kids are our best and brightest," he says. "They deserve to be taken seriously for their views on public policy."

Chapman says she researched the law and its regulations last fall and came to her position.

"It's nothing against women at all," she says. "I'm a female athlete — and I love to compete. At the same time, Title IX now is almost reverse discrimination."

Jocelyn Samuels, a vice president of the National Women's Law Center, rejects that argument. Opportunities for men and boys have increased in the Title IX era, she says.

Even if sports such as wrestling have lost ground, she says, that's legally irrelevant: "What Title IX demands is equality as measured by individual participation."

Schools that use the second or third tests can't cut women's teams. Schools using the first test can — if they remain proportional after the cuts. That makes small-roster women's teams most vulnerable. JMU cut women's gymnastics, archery and fencing.

For freshman gymnast Elly Hart, it's a bitter pill.

"My dream was to come to college and compete," she says. "I thought Title IX would help me."

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